I’m curious to learn more about the thesis that caffeine or other stimulant use can completely mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation until 30+ hours without sleep. My own (subjective, anecdotal) experience with caffeine is that occasional (once or twice a week) caffeine use fairly effectively mitigates occasional sleep deprivation if I got say 5-6 hours of sleep the night before as opposed to my preferred 7-8, but is not too effective if I slept less than 4 hours the night before. The more often I use caffeine, the less effective the caffeine becomes, and that furthermore, during periods of time when I use caffeine regularly (say a cup of coffee every day), I get a time several hours after I have my coffee when I have a “caffeine drop” and feel sleepy, so that my overall productivity isn’t much better than if I had no caffeine. I haven’t tried dealing with this by having several cups of coffee a day. That might work with regard to productivity, but I expect the side effects (jitters, energy/crash cycles, difficulty sleeping, and also reduced sensitivity to caffeine negating the euphoric effect of occasional caffeine consumption) would be quite unpleasant to me.
I’m curious to learn more about the thesis that caffeine or other stimulant use can completely mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation until 30+ hours without sleep. My own (subjective, anecdotal) experience with caffeine is that occasional (once or twice a week) caffeine use fairly effectively mitigates occasional sleep deprivation if I got say 5-6 hours of sleep the night before as opposed to my preferred 7-8, but is not too effective if I slept less than 4 hours the night before. The more often I use caffeine, the less effective the caffeine becomes, and that furthermore, during periods of time when I use caffeine regularly (say a cup of coffee every day), I get a time several hours after I have my coffee when I have a “caffeine drop” and feel sleepy, so that my overall productivity isn’t much better than if I had no caffeine. I haven’t tried dealing with this by having several cups of coffee a day. That might work with regard to productivity, but I expect the side effects (jitters, energy/crash cycles, difficulty sleeping, and also reduced sensitivity to caffeine negating the euphoric effect of occasional caffeine consumption) would be quite unpleasant to me.